1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the field of information storage technology. More particularly, the present invention relates to a means for prioritizing the storage of network nodes or web site addresses. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for designating certain nodes, links, or web addresses at the time of storage.
2. Description of Related Art
The worldwide network of computers commonly known as the xe2x80x9cInternetxe2x80x9d has seen explosive growth in the last, several years. Mainly, this growth has been fueled by the introduction and widespread use of so-called xe2x80x9cweb browsers,xe2x80x9d which enable simple graphical user interface-based access to network servers, which support documents formatted as so-called xe2x80x9cweb pages.xe2x80x9d A browser is a program which is executed on a graphical user interface (GUI),which allows a user to read hypertext by means of the GUI. The browser gives some means of viewing the contents of web pages (or nodes) and of navigating from one web page to another.
Examples of browsers for the World-Wide Web (WWW) include: Netscape Navigator from Netscape Communications Corporation, 501 East Middlefield Road, Mountain View, Calif. 94043, U.S.A.; Microsoft Internet Explorer, based on NCSA Mosaic, available from Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Wash.; NCSA Mosaic, first available from National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Urbana, Ill., U.S.A. and now affiliated with Netscape Communications Corporation, 501 East Middlefield Road, Mountain View, Calif. 94043, USA; Lynx, for use on cursor-addressable, character cell terminals or terminal emulators under Unix or VMS, developed by the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kans.; and W3, a browser for Emacs, Extensible MACro System, a popular screen editor. Web browsers act as clients of remote web servers.
The WWW is a massive hypertext system that a computer user accesses using an information access apparatus such as a WWW browser computer application. The WWW browser application communicates with information provider apparatuses, such as WWW server computer applications, to obtain information and services in the form of web pages. These web pages are identified by unique Universal Resource Locators (URL). Typically, a browser application provides bookmark capability for storing URLs for user-selected web pages. This simplifies the user""s future access to these bookmarked web pages.
The background of the World Wide Web (WWW), WWW browser applications and Uniform Resource Locators, are well described by reference to the first chapter of Instant HTML Web Pages by Wayne Ause, Ziff-Davis Press, ISBN 1-56276-363-6, copyright 1995, pages 1-15, hereby incorporated by reference as illustrative of the prior art. The URL specification, also incorporated by reference, is described in RFC1738 and can be found on the WWW at: http://www.cis.ohiostate.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc1738.html
Although the invention applies to information access and information provider apparatus, WWW browser and WWW server applications are representative of the technology. As such, this application describes the invention within the context of a preferred embodiment utilizing WWW browser and WWW server applications.
As mentioned above, the WWW is a massive hypertext system. Thus, the information provided to a user often includes references to other related information. These references are via hypertext links. Activating these hypertext links often results in accessing completely different web pages (supplied from completely different WWW server applications on other computer systems) from the web page that contains the link. Thus, a user often follows many links to reach desired information or services. One difficulty when traversing these links is that the user often loses track of the sequence of links used to arrive at a particular web page. Thus, the user has difficulty returning to a web page of interest. A bookmark facility addresses this problem by providing a mechanism to store and recall specific web pages of interest. Each bookmark comprises the title of the web page and the URL used to access the web page. Additionally, bookmarks often contain the date the web page was last visited and the date the web page was bookmarked, along with additional information.
One problem with the current browser technology is that, after xe2x80x9cweb surfing,xe2x80x9d or browsing, the Internet, the user does not have the capability of recreating a browsing sequence after the browser has been closed. Current browsers allow users to revisit previously opened web pages by using a xe2x80x9cBackxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cReversexe2x80x9d tool which backtracks the user""s browsing sequence one web page at a time. After the user has returned to a previous web page, the xe2x80x9cForwardxe2x80x9d tool is enabled, allowing the user to quickly browse forward to the forwardmost web page in the user""s browsing sequence. While these tools give the user certain limited flexibility in revisiting web pages, the tools limit the user to a single branch in the browsing path.
For example, after opening a web page, the user may jump to a second web page using a hypertext link which is embedded in the open web page. If, after jumping to a second page, the user returns to the first page and then, using another hypertext, jumps to a third page, current browser technology does not allow the user to navigate back to the second page using the above described browser tools. Rather, in order to navigate from one page to another, the user must either: use the links embedded on a web page; enter the address of the page; or find the address of the second web page in the history table created from previous web pages visited and stored in the browser""s web page cache.
Current browser technology only tracks a linear path, that is, one web page associated with each level of the path. As a result, the browser stores only a single path when the user navigates. Therefore, when jumping from a single web page to multiple web pages, or when creating multiple jumps from web pages at different levels of the navigation path, the browser stores only a single path, pruning all but the most recent jump from any one web page.
More importantly, current browser technology retains the navigation path only during the current session. No path information is retained after the browser is closed. The only means available for a user to track the navigation of a previous session is to open the history table and attempt to reconstruct a previous session""s navigation path from the time stamp associated with each web page in the history table.
The present invention discloses a method and apparatus for storing and displaying information related to a navigational path for accessing linking network node addresses. A pointer is added to each web page identifier, which points to the previous linking web page in the navigational path. Another pointer maybe added to each web page identifier, which points to the next linking web page in the navigational path. In other embodiments, pointers may be added which reflect browser navigational paths from web pages.